Prebiotic Molecule Detected in Interstellar Cloud

Chiral molecules -- compounds that come in otherwise identical mirror image variations, like a pair of human hands -- are crucial to life as we know it.

Living things are selective about which "handedness" of a molecule they use or produce. For example, all living things exclusively use the right-handed form of the sugar ribose (the backbone of DNA), and grapes exclusively synthesize the left-handed form of the molecule tartaric acid. While homochirality -- the use of only one handedness of any given molecule -- is evolutionarily advantageous, it is unknown how life chose the molecular handedness seen across the biosphere.

Now, Caltech researchers have detected, for the first time, a chiral molecule outside of our solar system, bringing them one step closer to understanding one of the most puzzling mysteries of the early origins of life.

A paper about the work appears in the June 17 issue of the journal Science.

The different forms, or enantiomers, of a chiral molecule have the same physical properties, such as the temperatures at which they boil and melt. Chemical interactions with other chiral species, however, can vary greatly between enantiomers. For instance, many chiral pharmaceutical chemicals are only effective in one handedness; in the other, they can be toxic.

"Homochirality is one of the most interesting properties of life as we know it," says Geoffrey Blake (PhD '86), professor of cosmochemistry and planetary sciences and professor of chemistry. "How did it come to be that all living things use one enantiomer of a particular amino acid, for example, over another? If we could run the tape of life again, would the same enantiomers be selected through a deterministic process, or is a random choice made that depends on a tiny imbalance of one handedness over the other? If there is life elsewhere in the universe, based on the biochemistry we know, will it use the same enantiomers?"

To help answer these questions, Blake and his colleagues at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) searched one particular molecular cloud, called Sagittarius B2(N), for chiral molecules. The team used the Green Bank Telescope Prebiotic Interstellar Molecular Survey (PRIMOS) of Sagittarius B2(N). The PRIMOS project, led by co-senior author Anthony Remijan of the NRAO, examines the spectrum of Sagittarius B2(N) across a broad range of radio frequencies. Every gas-phase molecule can only tumble in specific ways depending on its size and shape, giving it a unique rotational spectrum -- like a fingerprint -- that makes it readily identifiable in the PRIMOS survey.

The PRIMOS data revealed the signature of a chiral molecule called propylene oxide (CH3CHOCH2); follow-up studies with the Parkes radio telescope in Australia confirmed the findings. "It's the first molecule detected in space that has the property of chirality, making it a pioneering leap forward in our understanding of how prebiotic molecules are made in space and the effects they may have on the origins of life," says Brandon Carroll, co-first author on the paper and a graduate student in Blake's group. "While the technique we used does not tell us about the abundance of each enantiomer, we expect this work to enable future observations that will let us understand a great deal more about chiral molecules, the origins of homochirality, and the origins of life in general."

Propylene oxide is a useful molecule to study because it is relatively small compared to biomolecules such as amino acids; larger molecules are more difficult to detect with radio astronomy, but have been seen in meteorites and comets formed at the birth of the solar system. Though propylene oxide is not utilized in living organisms, its presence in space is a signpost for the existence of other chiral molecules.

"The next step is to detect an excess of one enantiomer over the other," says Brett McGuire (PhD '15), an NRAO Jansky Fellow and former member of the Blake lab, who shares first authorship on the work with Carroll. "By discovering a chiral molecule in space, we finally have a way to study where and how these molecules form before they find their way into meteorites and comets, and to understand the role they play in the origins of homochirality and life."

"The past few years of exoplanetary science have told us there are millions of solar system-like environments in our galaxy alone, and thousands of nearby young stars around which planets are being born," says Blake. "The detection of propylene oxide, and the future projects it enables, lets us begin to ask the question -- does interstellar prebiotic chemistry plant the primordial cosmic seeds that determine the handedness of life?"

Parrhesia

The two all-time most popular posts of Transudationism

A modern-day classic

All life is a form of light, and the cosmos is a holonic Holy Hologram.

Immanence ≋ Transcendence

Transudationism: mankinds' cosmic ideology.

SIC ITUR AD ASTRA!

Ascensional Transudation

Cosmic Evolution

All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's concluding thoughts from his 1978 Harvard address, A World Split Apart

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's concluding thoughts from his famous 1978 Harvard address,"A World Split Apart":

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but - upward.

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America’s ruling oligarchies. Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony is good for the oil industry’s control over resources and resource flows. The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state serves well the Israel Lobby’s Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial expansion.

Search This Blog

About Me

MIdwest Book Review:

"The seed of the universe is the big bang, says Kyle McDermott in 'The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism'. An explanation of this view which holds that all of current humanity and life on Earth today was intentionally set in motion all those billions of years ago, 'The Declaration of White Independence' probes matters of cosmological significance with straightforward candor and accessibility. Featuring intriguing concepts and ideas, 'The Declaration of White Independence' is highly recommended for metaphysical studies shelves."

The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes

and speaking of cosmic symphonies, Julianne Hough

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.